Did You Know...

“Blogmaster” Amanda Marcotte has resigned from the Edwards’ campaign (the site is currently down). Of course, it’s all the right wing’s and Catholic activists’ fault (a blame-avoidance strategy I highlighted on The O’Reilly Factor tonight before news of Marcotte’s resignation broke). Writes Marcotte this evening:

I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right. Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills, and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics (I’m anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track). Bill Donohue—anti-Semite, right wing lackey whose entire job is to create non-controversies in order to derail liberal politics—has been running a scorched earth campaign to get me fired for my personal beliefs and my writings on this blog.

In fact, he’s made no bones about the fact that his intent is to “silence” me, as if he—a perfect stranger—should have a right to curtail my freedom of speech. Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m pro-choice? Because I’m not religious? All of the above, it seems.

Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they accepted.

Unencumbered by her work for Edwards, she vowed to strike back. “The main good news,” Marcotte wrote, “is that I don’t have a conflict of interest issue anymore that was preventing me from defending myself against these baseless accusations. So it’s on.”

As for this being all the fault of conservative bloggers and Catholics, here is a liberal blogger named “Faithful Progressive” at the Christian Alliance for Progress blog, responding to MyDD blogger Matt Stoller’s attack on religious lefties who criticized Edwards’ initial decision to hire and stand by Marcotte and McEwan:

…what I find most disturbing is the absolute unwillingness of people like Mr. Stoller to admit that people on the left can engage in hate speech and can needlessly offend both allies and potential ones just as easily as extremists on the right. Edwards said the quotes offended him, and the bloggers in question have apologized. They have accepted responsibility for their posts. But people like Matt Stoller can only see that the source of the quotes was a bigot himself, so whatever he says should be dismissed–even when there is no dispute that his claims this time were true. There will always be right wingers who will make charges against those on the left–if it’s not Bill Donahue, it will be Karl Rove or Michelle Malkin, or Ann Althouse, or–do I need to go on? The press will report their charges and will ignore their bias and past track record. It is naive to think otherwise. What matters is whether or not there is any substance when the mud has been thrown by the designated attack dogs. In this case, there was substance to the charges made.

To deny that is a staggering and disturbing level of moral blindness that, fortunately, appears to be very much a minority and marginal point of view even among the most strident liberal blogs.

Donahue, Rove, Althouse, and Malkin–that’s a bizarre group to be lumping together under the banner of united right wingers. But still, Faithful Progressive makes the right point about the nutroots being so blinded by their hatred of their political opponents that they can’t see the gobsmackingly obvious substance of the charges against Edwards’ unhinged bloggers.

Brian O’Dwyer, a New York lawyer and Irish-American leader, who attacked Edwards the first time round, just came out with a statement:

“The blogger’s continuing hostility to Catholics and other Christians, especially in the centrality of the Virgin birth, is both morally wrong and, for Senator Edwards, politically stupid. Senator Edwards was horribly flawed in refusing to see the importance of how offensive the blogger’s earlier comments were to people of faith. This latest so-called review, published after Edwards refused to fire her for earlier anti-Catholic writings, should now wake him up and lead him to finally do the right thing as his campaign tries to move forward. Bigotry of any kind should have no role in the Democratic Party, or in any presidential campaign.”

O’Dwyer, also, is hard to cast as a GOP hitman. He’s the chairman of the National Democratic Ethnic Leadership Council, the Democratic Party’s official white-ethnic grouping; close to some labor union leaders; and a leading member of a prominent New York democratic family.

“We’re completely invisible to this debate,” said Eduardo Penalver, a Cornell University law professor who writes for the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal. He said he was dissatisfied with the Edwards campaign’s response. “As a constituency, the Christian left isn’t taken all that seriously,” Penalver said.

Democrats — and Edwards in particular — have embraced the language of faith and the imperative of competing with Republicans for the support of religious voters. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, even sits on the board of the leading organization of the religious left, Call to Renewal. But in private conversations and careful public statements today, religious Democrats said they felt sidelined by Edwards’ decision to stand by his aides.

At Slate, John Dickerson reports that “a top adviser to a rival campaign took a shot [at Edwards]: ‘Apparently they’re more afraid of the bloggers than they are the Catholics'” and concludes that “all campaigns are likely to face a version of his troubles this week.”

I wouldn’t say all, but I’d say all the major Democrat candidates have a major nutroots headache to deal with as 2008 draws nigh.

The Daily Kos is demanding to know which Democrat campaign dissed Edwards’ bloggers.

***

It’s not clear what the fate of Marcotte’s blog soul sister and fellow Edwards campaign staffer, Melissa McEwan, is. Nothing at her personal blog. No recent posts from her at Edwards’ blog.

Sadly, it seems, Marcotte hasn’t learned anything from this experience. Instead, she continues to see conspiracies rather than geniune outrage—and in so doing, she continues to lean on the crutch of her collective rather than taking a good hard look at her method of discourse.

Yes, I’ve said the f-word myself. Many, many times. And plenty of other profane words to boot. I’m not a Puritan and don’t pretend to be.

And if a presidential candidate ever hired me (ha!), and he was seeking the vote of the crucial long-haired-stoner-resembling-Shaggy’s-unkempt-cousin constituency, or the dishonest-self-righteous-innuendo-spreading-sock-puppet-lefty-lawyer constituency . . . well, I’d sit him down before he hired me, and warn him about a few things.

Marcotte alienated constituencies a little wider than this. Just to take one example, she bagged on every anti-abortion Christian in the country, branding them all as misogynists. If Edwards didn’t know about this, she should have been savvy enough to tell him. It’s not all about the f-word, it’s about how it’s employed.

Contrary to her assertion that we “right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills,” we Catholics drew attention to the fact that she engages in vituperative and demeaning attacks on religion and that Edwards appeared to have endorsed that by hiring her. Along the exact same lines, I would have criticized a Republican dumb enough to hire Fred Phelps* as a spokesperson, as would Marcotte herself. She simply refuses to accept the fact that she wrote incendiary and bigoted essays about Christians and embarrassed Edwards by agreeing to work for him after doing so.

Looks like we won’t have Amanda Marcotte to f****** kick around any more. She’s bailing out of the Edwards campaign, nobly crushed under the massive, well-financed pressure of the “right-wing noise machine” who just can’t stand to see a woman be successful, g****** it.

Walter Olson was one of the first to notice Marcotte’s Duke lacrosse team diatribe. Links to his posts are here. See also Jon Ham; his reax here.

…[T]hree things strike me as particularly hilarious about this: one, that Marcotte apparently is giving us fair warning that she intends to become even more foul-mouthed and unpleasant now that she is no longer ‘held back’ by her employment with Edwards.

Two, we can obviously see now the complete and utter insincerity of her ‘apology’.

Three, she actually thinks anyone is going to give a damn about her now! It’s over, babe…now you’re just another foul-mouthed lefty, and I can’t swing a cat without hitting three of those…

Amanda Marcotte resigned from the Edwards campaign. It was her decision. Amanda feels encumbered by the campaign and unable to effectively defend herself from the right-wing.

McEwan, by contrast, is apparently behaving herself post-apology. And so the woman who wrote all this (language warning):

What don’t you lousy motherfuckers understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds, and our families?

…The unmitigated temerity of calling themselves the “Pro-Family” Network while they try to undermine gay families is just about enough to send me permanently around the bend. And what’s this bullshit about children deserving to be “in that relationship”? If you’re so bloody passionate about making sure kids have a mom and a dad, then surely you’re spending at least as much time and effort on deadbeat parents and trying to criminalize divorce for couples with children, right? No? Pretty much just focused on preventing gays from giving homes to unwanted children? What a fucking surprise.

Oh, and I see on your shitbag website that “Hate Crimes Bills” are one of your priorities. What does that have to do with families? Or did you get that bug up your ass, Greg, when you went through your “conversion” and got out of the “gay lifestyle” you lived for the first half of your life? Just because you were “miserable” as a gay man and were “ashamed of being gay,” doesn’t give you the right to try to ungay-by-law all the other people who don’t feel ashamed of themselves, you useless, self-loathing turd…

…Aww, what a disappointment that this year’s hate-mongering doesn’t have a catchy phrase that will play to the Bible-bashing pseudo-Christians. That’s a damn shame.

Seriously, these wankers need to fuck off.

…will remain on the John Edwards for President staff as blogger and Internet liaison. For how long? Until the hinges come off again or nutroots peer pressure pushes her over the edge. In other words: not long.

Cassandra at Villanous Company offer her withering takedown of the fem-victim whining:

The truth is simple. No one cares what Marcotte or any of her ilk have to say: in America they are perfectly free to spout their ill-considered opinions day and night, and she had – and has – a large and admiring audience for her opinions. The only “penalty” for speaking freely in America is the same one we all face: that others may disagree, disapprove, counter your ideas with opposing speech, or God forbid, exercise their right to feel offended by what you say.

To clarify, no one is trying to “silence” Ms. Marcotte. Her site has not been shut down. Stop patronizing her and treating her like a little girl.

She made a choice.

She chose to self-edit her own speech to quiet the furor her own intolerant and intemperate speech generated. Moreover, she did so to try and save her position within the Edwards campaign rather than freely choosing to state that she stood by her expressed sentiments. That, also, would have been a choice.

But the logic of those who wish to turn Ms. Marcotte into a hapless victym is compelling. After all, as so many of our left-wing brethren have hastened to inform us, it is possible to find intolerant remarks on the reich side of the blogosphere as well. Everyone has made an intolerant remark at some point in their lifetime after all, and the presence of even one insensitive joke or off-color remark justifies literally reams of similar “satire” from Ms. Marcotte.

And the fact that none of the bloggers making these intolerant remarks have been hired by Republican candidates to represent their campaigns is hardly a persuasive argument either. It is a considerable relief to know that John Edwards’ staff, apparently, did NOT choose Ms. Marcotte because of the quality of her writing or her ideas, nor because he thought his reputation would be enhanced by association with her politics. After all, what she wrote on a personal site should never have been taken… well, seriously. Let that be a lesson to those narrow-minded ‘wingers on the reich: Womyn Power is not a thing to be trifled with.

And if any of this makes sense to you, we highly recommend a few sessions in our decompression chamber…